Jerry offered some interesting comments in response to my recent critique of Dawkins. They were well formulated and deserve to be pulled up on stage to perform a couple numbers with the band.
“So come on up Jerry’s comments!” (Randal extends his hand and helps the nervous comments up on stage.)
Jerry’s comments begin: “Sometimes, when reading the opinions of people I already know I disagree with, I find myself applying what I would call an impatient skepticism. I’m not looking for any grain of truth in what’s being said, not trying to understand the gist of it, not trying to understand the perspective of the writer; just looking for flaws, so that I can confidently reject the whole thing as the garbage I already knew it was. I do myself a great disservice when I read this way. I try to avoid it, but I’m human, and I know I don’t always succeed.”
“Well put,” Randal nods. “We all need to strive for charitable readings of others. Although we also need to balance that with the reality that after all charity it may indeed be garbage.” (Anybody care to defend the commentary of Harold Camping, Mr. End-of-the-world-is-May-21st? On the contrary, we’re happy to stuff everything he said in a plastic green bag and leave it by the curb.)
Jerry’s comments continue: “Dawkins’ letter begins with a general description of the scientific method, that of verifying what you think you know against reality as objectively as is humanly possible, and throwing beliefs away if you find they don’t match. Do you disagree with this?”
“No, I think Dawkins does a reasonable job of summarizing aspects of the methods of natural science like hypothesis formation and inference to the best explanation. I never said I had any problem with his description of science.”
Jerry’s comments continue: “Then he moves on to what he sees as methods of believing something without testing it against reality. He names three – tradition, authority, and revelation – and explains why he thinks each of them are bad. “Of tradition, he says that if a story was made up to begin with, that the passage of time doesn’t make it any more true. Do you disagree with this?”
Randal suddenly stops strumming his guitar. “Jerry’s comments,” he replies sternly, “I hope you’re not intentionally being disingenuous, but it at least appears that you are. The truism you state there isn’t the objection. The objection is that Dawkins says things like this: ‘What they [the adherents of various religions] said shows up [sic] exactly what I mean by ‘tradition’. Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence.” (emphasis added) So what Dawkins means by “tradition” is a set of beliefs which have no connection with evidence. That’s the engine driving Dawkins’ comments on tradition and that is what is so objectionable. Do you defend that? If you do, are you not aware that natural science is a tradition of enquiry? Are you not aware that skepticism is a tradition? Are you not aware that the minute you begin formulating a theory it becomes a historical interpretive framework and thus an embodied tradition?”
Jerry’s comments continue: “Of authority, he says that an authority figure might sometimes be right and sometimes be wrong, and that we shouldn’t believe what they say solely on that authority. Do you disagree with this?”
“In same cases that is true but as an unqualified maxim of course I disagree with it. Anybody who is scientifically literate must surely disagree with it unless they can somehow suppress through a psychological silo effect the fact that their path to scientific literacy came by way of accepting the opinions of authorities in certain fields simply because of their status as world-renown authorities. If a first year BSc student here at the University of Alberta takes a class with world-renown scientist Don Page, she will accept all sorts of things Page says simply on the basis of his authority. Jerry, do you really think she is being unreasonable for doing so? That’s a direct question. Please provide a direct answer.”
Jerry’s comments continue undeterred: “Of revelation, he says that feelings can be valuable, but that if they are not backed up by evidence, they are bad reasons for believing something is true. I know from reading your blog for all this time that you do disagree with this in part, but what do you make of the example he gives of people believing that a movie star they’ve never met loves them, saying such people are ill in their minds. Do you disagree with that?”
“Those people hold irrational beliefs. In that case they would need evidence and they don’t have it. Once again you focus on trivial cases. But why don’t you instead address the example I gave from morality? Or how about rational intuition? As I have pointed out in this blog, atheist Colin McGinn correctly observes that synthetic a priori knowledge bears the hallmarks of revelation. Now try imagining natural science without mathematics. Following Dawkins’ advice consistently would eviscerate science.”
Jerry’s comments continue: “Leaving aside all of the deep philosophical errors you were able to find, what is he really saying in this letter? I mean to the lay person. After all, this is a letter written by a lay person to a lay person, so it seems rather inappropriate for an academic analysis.”
Randal puts his guitar down, realizing it is difficult to strum and set Jerry straight at the same time. “It is interesting how you are so quick to ignore or set aside all those “deep philosophical errors”. Apparently matters like arbitrariness and self-refutation can just be ignored?!”
Randal continues: “Beetle defended the letter because it was written to a child. You’re defending it because it was written to laypeople. Why is it okay to present false, harmful, self-refuting and arbitrary advice to children or laypeople? The bottom line Jerry, is that this letter is dangerous indoctrination. It arbitrarily stipulates that the only sources of evidence are that which is known to the five senses, a stipulation that immediately excludes moral intuition (the foundation of ethics), rational intuition, aesthetic intuition, and whatever other sources of knowledge there may be out there.
“It is dangerous to say “Always believe an authority because they’re an authority.” It is equally dangerous – and equally foolish – to say “Never believe an authority because they’re an authority.” Don’t believe me? Imagine that Dawkins’ daughter is out in the countryside with her uncle who is a world-renown mycologist. She sees a mushroom which she believes is safe to eat. But her uncle tells her: “No darling, that is a poisonous mushroom.” “But Uncle,” she replies, “it looks exactly like the one I had last week, and that one was tasty.” Uncle responds: “Yes, they do look alike but this one is poisonous.” If she is to refrain from eating the mushroom it will be because she disregarded her father’s advice. Do you think she should follow her uncle’s advice simply based on his authority as a world-renown mycologist? Direct answer please.”
Randal continues: “Sadly, Dawkins is completely unaware that he is indoctrinating his own precious child into a very naïve version of a longstanding empiricist, sceptical worldview. Consequently he leaves her with the impression not that he has given her a worldview perspective, an interpretive framework, but rather that he has given her the objective Archimedean point to judge all worldviews. That is a terrible way to indoctrinate a child. Believe me, you’d have no charity if you read a Christian pastor’s letter to his child doing that. And neither would I. (See my discussion of “The Truth Project” in You’re Not as Crazy as I Think.) So forgive me if I want to shout from the rooftops that Dawkins is indoctrinating his child.”
Jerry’s comments continue: “All Dawkins is really advising his daughter to do is think for herself, and to value evidence more highly than authority (without evidence), tradition (without evidence), or revelation (without evidence). To me, you look very foolish calling that foolish.”
“Well Jerry, there are two different letters apparently. The first is the letter Dawkins wrote, the one that presents naïve sceptical empiricism not as a worldview but as the condition for accepting or rejecting all worldviews and truth-claims, the one that limits knowledge to empirically testable things, the one that reduces the essential concepts of “tradition,” “authority,” and “revelation” to three strawmen on the yellow brick road to epistemic perdition. The second is the letter you’d like to think Dawkins wrote, the one which is full of good, nuanced sense about critically assessing authorities, traditions and revelation. I share your admiration for that letter. Unfortunately Dawkins didn’t write it. Let me know when you are interested in discussing the letter he did write.”
